{Welcome disciples, I am Scorn, never known was I, by any other name. This is a trial of my design, so that you can prove yourselves to receive my legacy.

You will compete against each other in some rooms.

Collaborate to face challenges in other rooms, and you'll also get the chance to show your individual abilities as well.

Not everyone who joined this trial will get out alive, but those who do will do so much stronger.

I designed this trial to challenge you as much as to reward you, be alert constantly.

The entire labyrinth is hostile, and it wants to get rid of you. Don’t let it.

You will learn my story as you go, as that’s the entire purpose I made this legacy, to ensure that I reach my goals, even from beyond the void.

But above all, as newbies, you'll learn more about yourself. You'll learn about your strengths and limitations.

Time runs differently inside this labyrinth.

One year here equals one hour in the real world, and you'll get only one year.

If you don’t make it to the last room before the year is over, the labyrinth will kick you out.

But don’t worry, you will live. You will live to regret not reaching the grand prize!

The grand prize is a Body Dismantling Cultivation Manual. This manual will cover all the levels of the first cultivation stage.

Perfect cultivation, the best gains, and the easiest way to the top.

It’s very rare to achieve perfect cultivation at any stage.

This will let you and your sect after you, have a significant head start.

Let the trials begin, and may the best man win!}

*****

image [https://imgur.com/XfBSXXC.jpg]

Seph gulped once he heard the name of that manual, Body Dismantling. He felt that his body was failing him already. Everything was much weaker than before.

All his senses, all his muscles, and there was even more dismantling to follow?

He looked behind and thought, "Yeah; the portal is gone. I guess I'm stuck here, no turning back."

Regardless, this was what he heard after he entered the portal inside the black tree. He was the first to enter. There were over 100 Yin disciples entering this place.

All newbies, devoid of any power or any skill to their name, except for what they knew from their past lives.

There were a few martial artists in the group, or at least that’s what he heard whispered.

Which made this all worse, since they'll compete against each other.

He was never in a fight, except that one time a husband beat his ass after he saw his wife wearing inappropriate attire when he was delivering water to their house.

It was a one-way beating, honestly; he doesn’t like to think back on it.

He was chosen to enter the tree portal first, even though he was the newest among the group.

But the Elder said it was his fate since he had been at the tree before them.

That probably wasn’t the best thing that could have happened to him, since he saw all the newbies looking at him hatefully.

Once the elder said that, he recited some incantation on the tree, and the cavity shifted, revealing an even blacker portal that looked like a void in space and time.

He was already hating the color black. How did his life ever come to this?

When he entered the portal, he lost all sensation, even though he knew he was still walking forward, but it's like all his senses stopped working.

He could see nothing at all, hear nothing, or smell anything, and didn’t even feel any wind or the ground beneath his feet while he walked. He only knew that he was willing himself forward.

The first thing he saw was a door, a brown door, with vines climbing over it; it looked old and unused since nature had overtaken it, as well as the entire room, which was made of white stone, and also had vines climbing all over it.

The voice of Scorn came out of nowhere, disembodied. It felt weird to hear an introduction like that from Scorn. The man was a big deal, after all.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He was alone, so either the others would take their time before they'd spawn in the same room, or they were already in different rooms around this place.

He had a feeling, though, after hearing this introduction, that he didn’t luck out by being the first man here or anything. He would see his peers, eventually.

He looked around after the introduction had finished, and the room was empty.

He guessed that there was nothing here to do, so he braced himself and opened the door to the first room in the trial.

*****

image [https://imgur.com/XfBSXXC.jpg]

After he opened the first door, he found himself in what looked like a garden. There wasn’t a white stone floor under his feet this time, but soil.

Adorned was the wall with vines, like the last one, and there were three herb plots in the middle, with enough room to walk between the entire garden.

He recognized one bed was Vitality Grass. He was ecstatic, even though he couldn’t get it to his mother now. Each herb plot had eight herbs, and there were three different herbs in the room, one for each plot.

He noticed a wooden bucket in the clear path and resolved to put the herbs he would gather inside it for now.

Reaching his hand down to pick his first Vitality Grass, a small creature that looked like a mythical fairy flew towards his face from between the herbs.

It had what looked like a skirt made of a colorful flower and a naked upper body. It was very tiny, but it was terrifying! It was screaming while flying towards him, a look of absolute hate on its little face.

Its little teeth were very sharp, its hair looked like a flower sepal of some kind, a little green thing that covered its head, and it had a little wand that was flashing white as it waved it towards him.

He panicked immediately, but his reaction surprised even himself. When he lunged forward and bit the little fairy in half, his teeth cut clean through its tiny body. He panicked again, spitting out the upper half of its body that was inside his mouth.

At this moment, he realized that it tastes good!

He steeled his heart and swallowed what little blood was still inside his mouth, and he felt like he'd got very little energy from it. He couldn’t explain it.

Now that he thought about it, nobody ever told him how yin cultivation worked, not even the other newbies, to make sure that nobody had cultivated before entering this place.

Did I turn into a carnivore killer when I died and became a yin immortal? He thought.

He tried not to do it; he tried not to eat the rest of the little fairy, but unconsciously his hand reached out towards it, picked its upper half again and put it in his mouth.

He gulped it down in panic, then he noticed. He gained a little more energy this time, but he was constantly gaining energy little by little now.

He couldn’t stop a terrifying thought that was inside his mind. It’s delicious!

He let go of his inhibitions, picked up its lower half and put it in his mouth.

This time he chewed, he took his sweet time, and he felt great.

He's getting way more energy. He was feeling satisfied, as if he was eating mundane food, and his act didn’t feel unnatural at all!

He swallowed the little fairy after thoroughly eating it, and he got back to his original task of picking the herbs. He picked all the vitality grass.

Then, moved to the second bed, which had grass that looked like it was going to catch on fire. It was even hot to the touch.

This must be Fire Grass. I am not sure what it’s used for, but I will collect it as well.

He started picking, and when he reached out for the final one, he noticed another of the little fairies hiding in there as well.

It’s fearful of me. I can see it, since this one isn’t trying to attack me. The issue is, I don’t think I satiated my hunger by eating that last one. He thought to himself.

He then lunged for it with his hand. It screamed and flew away; the wand in its little arms lit up, and he sprinted after it until a ball of light hit him straight in the face.

He felt his forehead burning, but it didn’t feel like a severe injury at all. He stopped for a second, pondering his next move, but the screams he heard didn’t give him a chance to do that.

Two more screams came from the second herb plot, with two more lighting wands flying towards him; they were pretty low, and he was standing; he did the first thing that came to his mind, and he threw himself at them in a weird angle, to fall on them with his entire back.

True enough, he landed on both of them, and even though his back hurt from the landing, they got it much worse, even if they were still alive. He clutched both groggy fairies in his hands and bit both their tiny heads off.

The last fairy saw all this and was flying away frightened, but there was no other way out of this room but through the single, closed door.

He threw one of the two fairies in his mouth, started chewing, and ran after the last one, feeling energized by the energy entering his body. He caught it and bit its head off.

He sat on the ground, panting, thinking about what he had done; he didn't feel any remorse at all. He closed his eyes and started breathing in and out. Calm washed over him after the intense fight. Even if it was easy, it's still intense.

He felt the pain disappear from his back and forehead, and then he felt extreme pain when the right half of his chest cage popped back into its original place, and it healed; the process was very painful, but an extreme sense of relief came over him right after, when he did this, the energy inside his body was gone, as if it had been consumed to heal him.

He wasted no more time at this point and ate the last two fairies.

He meditated again right after, and the rest of his chest popped back into place, fully healed. He was back to his former self, as back as he could be anyway, since he still looked like a walking corpse.

He opened his eyes, trying to make sense of what he knew so far, eating other creatures energized him, and chewing them gave him instant energy, but if he swallowed them whole, the energy trickled in for a while at much slower amounts, as if he was digesting food.

This energy doesn’t leave his body. He can sense it to an extent, and with meditation, he could heal himself by consuming this energy.

Was this what cultivation was like for the Yin immortals?

He had no clue, but he will need to make more tests in the future as he continues along.

His mind was a whirlwind of thoughts. His ruthlessness in the fight worried him. He never had that in him before becoming a yin cultivator. He was doing the unthinkable by eating those fairies, but when the danger bells blared in his head, he lost it, and it's what his instincts entailed on him to do. That sense of losing himself in the act, then that exhilarating, refreshing feeling after eating the fairies. They were all alien to him, and mysterious, and he wondered what was really happening to him.

He headed for the last herb plot and looked at it warily. Wondering if there were more of those fairies inside, he thought to himself, it’s great that monsters can get scared that way. It would have been annoying to continue running after that last fairy.

The herbs in the last plot looked weak, just straight strings of grass sticking out of the ground; he knelt and tried to pluck them out, only to be met with force he wasn’t expecting from the frail grass, he grabbed it with both hands and pulled, only for a bulb root to come out of the ground, the root looked like it’s made of soil; he didn’t know what this was, so he put it in the bucket, and continued towards the closed door in front of him.